Republicans Risk Alienating Hispanics in 2016

Donald Trump has broken the somewhat unspoken rule - racism and bigotry is supposed to be fanned through dog whistle messages and never spoken of outright.  Trump's extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric has swept away the GOP smoke screen used time and time again to pander to white supremacists and nativists without driving away moderates and, most importantly, without totally alienating Hispanic voters.  Now, with Trump exciting the ugliest - and in most cases, stupidest - elements of the GOP base, the rest of the self-prostituting would be GOP 2016 presidential candidates have joined the anti-immigrant chorus.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the GOP's ongoing alienation of Hispanic voters.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans thought they had learned a lesson after 2012: Turning off Latino voters ensures defeat in the general election.

But as the disruptive presidential candidacy of Donald J. Trump continues to gain support, his hard line on immigration has driven rivals to match his biting anti-immigrant language and positions long considered extreme. It risks another general election cycle in which Hispanics view the party as unfriendly no matter who the nominee is, Republican strategists warned.

This week, several of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, echoed his call to end automatic citizenship for the American-born children of undocumented immigrants, repealing a constitutional right dating from the Civil War era.

And Mr. Trump’s plan for mass deportations — “They have to go,” he said — which is supported by a sizable minority of Republican voters nationwide, has encouraged rivals to similarly push the edges on immigration.

National Republican strategists warn that catering to the most hard-line voters on immigration in the nominating contest will hurt the party in the general election, as it did the 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, who endorsed “self-deportation” for illegal immigrants and attracted historically low Latino support.

“If Republicans want to be competitive in the general election, they have to distance themselves from Trump on both illegal and legal immigration,” said Alfonso Aguilar, an official in George W. Bush’s administration and the executive director of the American Principles Project’s Latino Partnership, a conservative group. “His proposal on birthright citizenship is very insulting to Latinos, and every day, this is the top story on Spanish language media. Right now, if the other candidates don’t respond to Trump, Latinos will buy the argument that Republicans agree with him.”

Demographics suggest Republicans have an even bigger challenge with Latinos in 2016 than in previous elections. The number of Latino voters has been growing rapidly. The population of Latinos eligible to vote by 2016 is expected to increase by 18 percent over 2012 to about 28 million people, more than 11 percent of voters nationwide. . . . .

Trump, who is not only denouncing illegal immigrants in nativist language but seeking severe limits on legal immigration. And his calls to deport illegal immigrants are resonating with many voters. . . . Perhaps the most difficult issue for the Republican Party is Mr. Trump’s call to deport not only all illegal immigrants, but also young people who came to this country as children and have received protections though executive actions by Mr. Obama.

“We have to keep the families together, but they have to go,” Mr. Trump said on “Meet the Press” in an interview, broadcast on Sunday, aboard his jet at the Des Moines airport.

[T]hat position is out of step with three-fourths of Americans — including 76 percent of independents — who believe illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country if certain conditions are met, . . . 

No matter who emerges as the Republican nominee, experts in Hispanic voting say many will remember the harsh anti-immigrant tone of the primaries. 

Rust-Belt Revivalists Can’t Save the GOP

While most Republicans remain in a frenetic race to out pander themselves to the Christofascist element in the GOP base, one cadre of the GOP believes the party's salvation lies in pandering to the most disgruntled elements of white working class voters in the hope that these efforts will boost voter turnout for this demographic and provide a deus ex machina in the 2016 presidential elections.  Conservative columnist Michael Gerson at the Washington Post calls these members of the GOP "Rust Belt Revivalists" and makes the case as to why this effort in the GOP is doomed to fail.  Here are column highlights:

Attempting to analyze political statements by Donald Trump is often a high dive into a shallow pool. But a number of conservative commentators are making the jump, discerning hidden virtues in his depiction of marauding immigrants intent on crime and rape. 

While finding Trump’s words “crude and reprehensible,” the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol thinks they summarize a “genuine concern about illegal immigrants.” “For all its crassness,” says National Review’s Rich Lowry, “Trump’s rant on immigration is closer to reality than the gauzy cliches of immigration romantics.” 

Some of this is surely an attempt to make the best of a bad situation, the equivalent of: “My, that gangrene is such a pleasing shade of green.”

One brand of Republican reformers — the Rust Belt revivalists — believes the GOP has been too dominated by corporate interests and needs to identify more directly with the economic frustrations of working-class voters. Trump is the cartoon version of this view — preaching protectionism and accusing immigrants of “destroying the fabric of the country.” But Rick Santorum makes a similar economic case, proposing to cut immigration by 25 percent as part of a plan (according to his Web site ) “to protect American workers from foreign labor that is taking jobs that Americans could otherwise hold.”  

In this strategy, there is an inherent tension between appealing to the white working class and appealing to immigrants. . . . the white working class remains the larger group of voters. A concentrated focus on their concerns, the argument goes, might open a path to victory through Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. 

Another group of reformers — the advocates of a demographic pivot — also believes the Republican Party is too closely identified with the boardroom and the country club. But they look at the declining percentage of white voters . . . and argue that the Republican coalition will need to be browner in order to win in places like Florida, Colorado and Nevada. 

It will come as no surprise that I view the arguments of the Rust Belt revivalists as less compelling and more dangerous. 

First, the effect of immigration on native-born wages, while not imaginary, is easily overstated. . . . The problems of the working class will not be solved by immigration restrictionism.

Second, the advocates of a demographic pivot, even if they are not currently right, are eventually right.  It may well be possible in the 2016 presidential election for Republicans to pump up the white vote enough to secure a victory. But we are reaching the natural limits of that strategy.

Third, the strategy of appealing to the white working class by criticizing immigration raises the risk of racial polarization. Enthusiasm for this approach sometimes has reasons other than economics. There can be ugliness beneath, as Trump demonstrates. 

Finally, a political appeal that encourages division would worsen the GOP’s main political problem: a durable impression that it does not care for the country as a whole. As the old Southern strategy fades, it would be a terrible mistake to replace it with a different form of fear and exclusion.

Republicans have an opportunity to craft an agenda of economic mobility — to reward work (through wage subsidies), strengthen families (with a larger child credit) and encourage skills (with education reform) — that could appeal to both the white working class and rising minority groups, instead of pitting them against each other.  It is the way that Republicans can win, and deserve to win.

I think Gerson is correct on his analysis of the "rustbelt revivalists, yet I suspect that they are the faction that will win out in the near term - or at least until the GOP has lost yet another presidential election cycle. 

Latino Leader: Trump Exposing Truths About the Republican Party

Donald Trump continues to be proving toxic to the Republican Party's effort to pretend to be inclusive and a "big tent."  The fact that Trump is polling so well (in relative terms) is because, as previously noted, his racism is gospel among much of the GOP base.  As Trump seeks to exploit this thinly veiled racism and anti-minority bigotry he is exposing the real GOP, if you will.  And people are taking note, especially in minority communities, but Hispanics most of all. One such person is Arturo Carmona, the executive director of Latino advocacy group Presente Action, who believes that it is a good thing that Trump is exposing the real nature of the Republican Party.  Think Progress looks at this acknowledgement.  Here are highlights:

Real estate mogul and presidential candidate Donald Trump touted his business and dealmaking expertise in his campaign launch speech last month, saying, “I did a lot of great deals and I did them early and young, and now I’m building all over the world.” But remarks he made in that same speech are threatening his business empire as companies move to distance themselves from the candidate who said that undocumented immigrants from Mexico “killers and rapists.” On Monday, NBC cut ties with Trump and on Wednesday, Macy’s announced it would stop carrying merchandise from his brand. 

Trump responded on Wednesday, saying it was his decision to terminate his relationship with Macy’s and NBC because the corporations clearly “support illegal immigration, which is totally detrimental to the fabric of our once great country.”

One group that hasn’t yet cut ties with the real estate mogul is the Republican Party. While NBC, Univision and Macy’s have publicly denounced his beliefs, members of the Republican party have remained silent or have expressed their support for his anti-immigrant sentiment.  

“Donald Trump’s remarks are very racially charged and should have no place in the American political dialogue of today,” Arturo Carmona, the executive director of Latino advocacy group Presente Action, told ThinkProgress. “In a way, it’s good that we have somebody that’s actually speaking the truth like Donald Trump about what’s really motivating many of these [anti-immigrant] policies. I’d rather have somebody like Trump be honest about what the motivations are than have the GOP and Congress hiding behind political rhetoric, but at the same time, passing policies that are criminalizing immigrants and trying to take away executive action protections.” 

While some members of the Republican party will attempt to distance themselves from Trump and his remarks to appeal to a wider swath of voters, Carmona said it won’t be so easy.

“[Trump’s remarks] show powerful racist undercurrents that are connected with very important sectors of the GOP and the Republican party,” he said. “Now many of its leaders try to distance themselves from that, but very often, as we’ve seen with Trump and many other right-wing leaders, we see that they often pop their head out and the GOP quickly wants to hide them and throw them under the carpet. Well they can’t do that anymore with Donald Trump running for president and it’s going to have a very important impact in showcasing the true colors of the Republican Party.”  

“The fact that Donald Trump is polling so high in some of these early voting states is because there is still a significant share of the population — a minority but a very influencial portion of the Republican Party — that is still anti-immigrant and anti-Latino and I would venture to say anti-communities of color,” Carmona said. “But they’re a minority and they drive an agenda based on fear, based on division and based on the superiority of one group. And I think that’s something that this country is quickly running away from. The electorate is rapidly changing and any candidate that is associated with that platform, as most of the GOPers are, is destined to lose.”  

Personally, I hope Trump remains in the race long enough to fully expose the ugliness of the GOP base's agenda and to taint all of the other GOP presidential nomination candidates. 

House Republicans Seek to Revoke Birth Right Citizenship

Some in the GOP ranks seemingly never cease in their quest to attack immigrants and find ways to deport Hispanics in particular.  How this will help any GOP presidential candidate win votes outside of the shrinking angry white base of party is mind numbing.  But then again, much of the agenda of today's GOP is mind numbing and down right ugly.  The latest target of GOP hate: removing a provision of the 14th Amendment that grants citizenship to anyone born on American soil. One would have to be blind not to see that the motivation behind the effort is to revoke the citizenship of children of undocumented immigrants born in America which furthers the white supremacist demands of much of the GOP base.  The Washington Post looks at the effort.  Here are highlights:

The Civil War era’s 14th Amendment, granting automatic citizenship to any baby born on American soil, is a proud achievement of the Party of Lincoln. But now House Republicans are talking about abolishing birthright citizenship. 

A House Judiciary subcommittee took up the question Wednesday afternoon, prompted by legislation sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and 22 other lawmakers that, after nearly 150 years, would end automatic citizenship. 

The 14th Amendment, King told the panel, “did not contemplate that anyone who would sneak into the United States and have a baby would have automatic citizenship conferred on them.” Added King, “I’d suggest it’s our job here in this Congress to decide who will be citizens, not someone in a foreign country that can sneak into the United States and have a baby and then go home with the birth certificate.”

It’s no small task to undo a principle, enshrined in the Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court, that defines the United States as a nation of immigrants. It’s particularly audacious that House Republicans would undo a century and a half of precedent without amending the Constitution but merely by passing a law to reinterpret the 14th Amendment’s wording in a way that will stop the scourge of “anchor babies” and “birth tourism.”

Judiciary Committee Republicans . . . .  had to search far and wide for people who would take this view, because they ended up with a bizarre witness: an octogenarian professor from the University of Texas named Lino Graglia.

This would be the Lino Graglia who caused a furor in 1997 when he said that Latinos and African Americans are “not academically competitive with whites” and come from a “culture that seems not to encourage achievement.” He also said at the time that “I don’t know that it’s good for whites to be with the lower classes.”

And this is the very same Lino Graglia whose nomination for a federal judgeship in the 1980s fell apart amid allegations that he had urged Austin residents to defy a court-ordered busing plan and had used the racist word “pickaninny” in the classroom.

Abolishing automatic citizenship for babies born on American soil, and having Graglia make the case, probably won’t help Republicans overcome their problems with minorities, who are gradually becoming the majority.

Democrats, by happenstance, presented a sharp contrast to the GOP effort Wednesday: Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and others met at Washington’s Carnegie Library with a coalition including immigration and civil rights advocates to launch a new jobs campaign, “Putting Families First.”

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) read aloud some of Graglia’s other comments about minorities. . . . . . The congressman asked that Graglia’s past statements be entered into the record. But Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) complained that the line of inquiry was “a non-germane subject for this hearing.”

The GOP seems hell bent to continue on a path of slow political suicide. 

Why the Border Crisis Is a Myth

Anti-immigrant Tea Party fanatics have been protesting along the U.S. - Mexico border outraged, I mean outraged, that non-whites are attempting to cross into the United States to escape violence and hardship in their Central American countries.  The hypocrisy of these "real Americans" is three fold: (i) they are descendants of immigrants themselves, (ii) while they are attacking Barack Obama, the law at the center of the debate was passed on George W. Bush's watch in 2008, and (iii) they falsely claim to be godly Christians even though the reject they Gospel message and seemingly learned nothing from the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Now, an El Paso, Texas judge suggests that the "border crisis" is in some ways a myth.  Here are excerpts from her op-ed in the New York Times:

TO hear the national news media tell the story, you would think my city, El Paso, and others along the Texas-Mexico border were being overrun by children — tens of thousands of them, some with their mothers, arriving from Central America in recent months, exploiting an immigration loophole to avoid deportation and putting a fatal strain on border state resources.

There’s no denying the impact of this latest immigration wave or the need for more resources. But there’s no crisis. Local communities like mine have done an amazing job of assisting these migrants. 

Rather, the myth of a “crisis” is being used by politicians to justify ever-tighter restrictions on immigration, play to anti-immigrant voters in the fall elections and ignore the reasons so many children are coming here in the first place.

Contrary to the heated pronouncements, this is nothing we haven’t seen before. Groups of refugees arrive by plane and are processed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When they are released, Annunciation House takes them to a shelter where they get a shower, a place to sleep, meals and even health care — all provided by volunteers and private donations. 

The families of the refugees also help, often paying for travel costs and taking them into their homes. The refugees then move on, to Florida, Georgia, New York or elsewhere. 

While the numbers of refugees arriving in El Paso are a fraction of the number arriving in McAllen, in southern Texas, the chain of events is generally the same. Like El Paso, South Texas is not the permanent destination for these refugees. And the response from McAllen’s citizens has been generous, too. 

The same can’t be said of our politicians. What we are hearing from Austin and Washington is an almost Pavlovian response to immigration concerns. My governor, Rick Perry, a Republican, announced this week that he was sending 1,000 National Guard soldiers, at a cost of $12 million a month, to bolster the border.

In Texas, state legislators and the Department of Public Safety are planning to spend an additional $30 million over six months to create a “surge” of state law enforcement resources, an expenditure that some in our state’s Capitol would like to see made permanent. 

The costs are significant. Every day we detain an undocumented child immigrant, it costs Immigration and Customs Enforcement — i.e., the taxpayer — $259 per person, significantly more than we spend to educate a child in a middle-class school district.

The irony is that this cash-intensive strategy comes from leaders who consistently underfund health care, transportation and education. And they ignore the crucial fact that children crossing our borders aren’t trying to sneak around law enforcement: They are running to law enforcement.

This effort to take away rights that were granted when there was significantly less anti-immigrant fervor isn’t just shortsighted and expensive, it’s un-American. We can debate the wisdom of providing greater protection to Central American children than to Mexican children, but there can be no doubt that giving safe haven to a child facing violence in a country that cannot protect its most vulnerable citizens is what a civilized country, with the resources we possess, should do. 

Does the Rise of David Brat Signal A Revolt Against the GOP's New Gilded Age?

I will be candid.  I find David Brat, the Tea Party hero who defeated Eric Cantor last week in the GOP primary, in many ways to be down right scary.  He's in bed with the Christian Right - the Tea Party is after all 85-90% far right Christian - and certainly is no friend to gays or anyone who isn't a white heterosexual conservative Christian.  But, as a piece in Politico notes - he also is no friend of those in the GOP who are striving to return America to the Gilded Age of 100+ years ago.  In fact, a some of his economic positions almost sound liberal when he is condemning wealth disparity and rapacious big business. Thus, Brat may well be the unexpected leader of a revolt against the agenda of the Koch brothers and others of their ilk within the GOP who see themselves as a reincarnation of the robber barons of old.  Here are some article highlights:

All of these explanations [as to why Cantor lost] may be at least partially true. But perhaps the enduring significance of this election will be that Brat’s campaign was a textbook example of the new right-wing populism. It also revealed affinities with populist campaigns going back to the 19th century as well as curious similarities with left-wing populism in more recent years.

The most striking aspect of Brat’s core stump speech is that while he is caustically critical of politicians from both parties, his main target is business and the “gazillionaires” who suck up a disproportionate share of America’s wealth. He blasts his opponent for having voted for TARP (thereby rewarding the big banks, Wall Street and America’s Chinese creditors) and the farm bill (enriching huge agribusiness), as well as for watering down the STOCK Act, which would have prevented members of Congress from engaging in insider trading. But Cantor’s real puppet-masters, according to Brat, are the “crony capitalists” on K Street and nefarious business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. Cantor is “completely beholden to corporate interests” and seeks “to sell America to the highest bidder.”

There’s some truth to this critique. As one Wall Street Journal headline on his big-money ties succinctly put it, “Eric Cantor’s loss a blow to Wall Street.”

But Brat goes further. Business influence is so entrenched and widespread on Capitol Hill, he says, that “There is just one party up in D.C. right now”: the money-and-power party. While the “donor class” has easy access to Congress, the business-controlled government is not just indifferent to average citizens but actively despises them and wants to take away their freedoms. The government is actively persecuting ordinary people through NSA spying, IRS investigations and regulations that force families to spend their money on expensive light bulbs rather than food. And the public has no voice, since business controls the media while establishment Republicans like Cantor silence voters through “slating”and other machine-politics tactics. The result is that the United States has become a ruined, broken country . . . . .

[A]lthough Brat depicts illegal immigration as the No. 1 national problem, he focuses his ire not so much on the immigrants themselves as on the corporate interests that require their political lackeys to vote for open borders and amnesty. The “big guys” thereby get to enjoy cheap immigrant labor while also benefiting from immigrants driving down wages for American workers.

Much of Brat’s rhetoric could have been lifted directly from the 1892 platform of the People’s Party, better known as the Populists. Like Brat, the Populists of old declared that they were living in “a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin.” At the root of this corruption were big businesses and great fortunes that dominated both parties, silenced public opinion and “subsidized or muzzled” the media.

I suspect that the so-called GOP establishment does not want to see too many more David Brats come to the fore.